Chapter 8: Gerald
Diana made the call to the U.S.
Attorney's office that afternoon.
I sat across from her desk while she spoke, listening to half a conversation I couldn't fully follow — case numbers, statute references, the word *voluntary* used three times in a row.
When she hung up, she said: "They want to meet Friday."
"Will they move on Gerald?"
"That depends on what we bring them.
But yes — a living person who has been conducting financial transactions under a false identity, connected to a company under federal review, with documented wire transfers from a fraudulently assigned account?" She set down her pen.
"They will move."
Robert had gone to Tucson that morning.
He called at four o'clock.
"He's still there," he said.
"Same address.
I drove past.
His car is in the driveway."
"Does he know what's happening?"
"Michael called him.
So yes.
But Gerald is seventy-one years old, he's been living quietly for four years, and I don't think he expected the storage unit."
"What did you expect when you started all of this?" I asked.
"When you first decided to get involved."
A pause.
"Honestly?
I expected to hand you the folder and let you make your own choices.
I didn't expect Michael to have changed the locks.
I didn't expect Natalie.
And I didn't expect you to be as calm as you have been."
"I'm not calm," I said.
"I'm just moving."
"That's the same thing, at your best."
I didn't know what to say to that.
"There's something else," Robert said.
"Gerald left a message on my personal line this morning.
Before Michael called him, I think.
He said — and I'm reading this directly — *Tell her I'm sorry.
Tell her I tried to stop it two years ago and Michael wouldn't listen.
Tell her the house was always supposed to stay hers.*"
I sat down on the edge of Diana's guest chair.
"He tried to stop it," I said.
"That's what he says."
"Do you believe him?"
"I believe he's afraid," Robert said.
"Whether that's the same as remorse, I genuinely don't know."
I thought about Gerald's funeral.
The service at a church in north Scottsdale.
Linda in black.
Michael delivering a eulogy about a man who built something from nothing.
I had cried.
I had held Linda's arm in the parking lot because she seemed unsteady, and she had looked at me with an expression I had read as grief.
Now I didn't know what it had been.
"I want to talk to him," I said.
"Rachel—"
"Not to forgive him.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
But I want to hear it from him directly.
I want to look at him and ask him why he let it go on for two years after he says he tried to stop it."
Robert was quiet for a moment.
"I'll arrange it."
"One more thing," I said.
"Natalie.
She came to us.
She gave us the storage unit.
She didn't know about the registered agent switch.
Whatever happens with Michael, I don't want her buried under this."
"She's not named in the federal matter."
"Make sure it stays that way."
"I'll tell Diana."
I set the phone down.
Outside the office window, Scottsdale was doing what it always did — bright sky, dry heat, everything looking clean from a distance.
My name was on a passport in a storage unit in Tempe.
My name was on a shell account that had moved money for six years.
My name was the first one anyone would find.
And somewhere in Tucson, a man who was supposed to be de@d was sitting in a house with his car in the driveway, waiting to see what I would do.
I picked up the phone and called my sister.
She answered on the second ring.
"Claire," I said.
"I need you to come to Scottsdale."
"What happened?"
"A lot.
I'll explain when you get here." A pause.
May you like
"I just didn't want to be alone tonight."
"I'm already looking at flights," she said.
